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Thursday, July 9, 2015

The Anomaly (2014)

The Anomaly was positive surprise. Sometimes weird science fiction movies turn out to be good. What made this so interesting was one story telling element. Without it The Anomaly would have been average and forgettable.

Ryan is ex-solder who wakes up in weird situations. By waking up I mean he can be in sleep for weeks and then wake up in middle of something like his body is doing something when he is not awake. He stays awake for nine minutes and forty-seven seconds at the time. Then he blackouts for sometime. We only see those moments when he is awake and tries to figure out what is happening.

This style of storytelling kept movie interesting. There was always sense of urgency. What could he do with time he has. At first he seem to wake up on totally random situations in different cities. As movie goes on things start to make more sense. Mystery has some crazy elements but style of story telling keeps it interesting.

End credits tell director and male lead Noel Clarke brought something original content to story. If I have to guess it was Russian mafia and fighting scenes. Russian mafia was there only to provide two long action scenes. There were too many action scenes during first part. It was like Ryan had to fight someone or someones every time he woke up. Later action scenes felt more justified from story's point of view.

I would have like The Anomaly more with less action scenes. They slowed the story telling and it felt strange how much Ryan wanted to fight when he knew he had so little time when he was awake. Acting isn't always best possible but other than that I don't have bad things to say. I liked it mainly because of style of story telling. Story wouldn't have been that interesting told otherwise.